Remedy

At yesterday's Microsoft press conference, Remedy Studios unveiled its new game Quantum Break which looks to mean there won't be any more Alan Wake games coming any time soon. It seems fitting then that the two series titles...

New IP from the Alan Wake folks
[Update: Official trailer added.]
Alan Wake developer Remedy is making Quantum Break, a new game for Xbox One.
The trailer begun in live action with a mother and daughter. It then showed a ship (which seemed to be glit...

After the Bayonetta 2 video, this one is much, much, much better.
Here is Mega64 at their finest -- harassing the crap out of people! I love how after a minute Derrick just fesses up to being a d*ck for kicks and giggles. Th...

May 10 //
Allistair PinsofMax PayneDeveloper: Remedy EntertainmentPublisher: Rockstar Games, Gathering (PC)Released: July 23, 2001In a nutshell: With only a PC arcade-style racing game behind them, Death Rally, Remedy spent half a decade developing Max Payne: An ambitious shooter set in NYC that told a contemporary noir story through comic book panels, cutscenes, and action. It stood out in 2001 for its photo-realistic graphics, cinematic presentation, and slow-mo mechanic.
Spotlighting the player’s actionsI often find myself slowly panning the camera like a E3 demo guide when I play a Call of Duty game -- going against the game’s player direction in order to give myself a more cinematic experience. But, when I play Max Payne I feel like the ideal performance leads directly to the ideal visual feast. This is a rarity in videogames, but I’m not sure why it should be.
Game developers must always perform a balancing act in giving players space to perform while also giving them rewards for their performance. The key to Max Payne’s success is its ability to highlight player action in a flashy way without taking away their influence or ruining the flow of action. Max Payne was revolutionary in combining these two aspects into a seamless experience. Where other games might put you in a fight and then present a cinematic of the events following it, Max Payne’s visual flair in battles came directly from the player’s actions -- letting a well-aimed bullet and bold dodge trigger brief cinematic moments.Metal Gear Solid made me feel like I was watching an awesome action flick, but it wasn’t until I played Max Payne that I felt I was in one. By framing the player’s actions with panning camera angles, dramatic zooms, and mesmerizing slow motion, Max Payne put the spotlight on the player’s actions in a way never attempted before.Developers shouldn’t be inspired by the mechanic of player activated slow-motion. Instead, they should focus on the effect framing a player's actions can have on combat. God of War and Uncharted achieve the same impact by presenting wide cinematic angles during platforming segments. Ninja Gaiden 2 applied this by highlighting deathblows in spectacular fashion, while Deus Ex: Human Revolution added spectacular visual animations to certain abilities when successfully performed. Even Resonance of Fate, a Japanese RPG of all things, managed to make a rote battle into a John Woo fever dream where characters endlessly jumped and fired guns when given the order.
In years since Max Payne's debut, God of War, Fallout 3, and other games have done this in their own way to great effect. It’s easy to look at bullet time as a gimmick or a novel feature. In truth, it changes everything: the tone, the pace, and the spectacle of combat. There is nothing else like it. Even though others games replicated this feature, as in the F.E.A.R. series and Stranglehold, it never felt quite as special as it did in Max Payne.
Versatile arsenalA good selection of weapons in a game is defined by its strengths as much as it is defined by its shortcomings. On the surface, Max Payne has the most generic set of weapons a videogame could possibly offer. As it should -- after all, the story is based in New York City, circa 2001. While sci-fi and arena shooters may have more imaginative weapons, few games strike the near perfect balance of Max’s arsenal. Due to careful calibration on the developer’s part, each weapon has its ideal time and place. Even during the game’s final hours, I found myself reaching to weapons obtained hours earlier out of strategic necessity. Sure, the Striker may have terrible spread (in the first Max Payne, at least) -- and you can cheat the reload of every weapon by quickly swapping them in-and-out -- but otherwise the entire weapon selection is pretty much flawless. In one instance, you may assume a door in front of you leads to a narrow hallway, so you equip dual Ingram uzis to deal maximum damage in a short amount of time. Turns out it’s a wide open courtyard with enemies above and below. Oops! So you snipe an enemy above, pull out the M4 Carbine on enemies below, and dive into an incoming group of enemies with dual Desert Eagles.As good as the first Max Payne’s weapons were, the sequel perfected it by giving projectiles a dedicated button and rebalancing other weapons (although the grenade launcher and baseball bat were sorely missed). While many games have a loadout similar to Max’s, it’s rare they strike the same balance. The difference it makes is drastic. Instead of leaning toward the vastly superior weapon, Max Payne’s intense combat scenarios and challenging difficulty demand the player to know what’s right for a specific enemy type and setting. Every battle is a victory well earned in Max Payne, even when it leaves poor Max hobbling on one leg toward the next ambush.
Emotional complexityWhen David Cage and Jenova Chen speak of “emotional complexity”, I roll my eyes. After all, who is to say a father grieving for his kidnapped son is more emotionally complex than Kratos’ endless rage at the gods? From a distance, every emotion is equal in its potential for impact. It all depends on delivery and the player’s value judgement.However, I don’t entirely dismiss the idea of “emotional complexity.” It’s just that to me it means something much different. It’s not about the value judgement of a specific emotion but the layering of contrasting emotions: The way a Smiths song can sound so dour, while Morrissey’s sardonic lyrics can make me smile. The way George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead can make a zombie a source of fear seconds after being a source of laughter. Max Payne is also full of emotionally complexity. In play, the game can be harrowing depending on player health and ammo. In storytelling, the game can be freighting or laugh-out-loud funny depending on what it’s presenting at the time. In one instance you are in a nightmare having a dead baby shoved into your face, while another stage contains a parody of BBC’s Upstairs Downstairs. Having contrasting emotional elements isn’t a key to success, as Fez and Sword & Sworcery recently proved. Both games have dialog and elements that break the game’s fiction for a cheap, self-knowing laugh. It all comes down to delivery. While Max Payne 2 may take itself a bit more seriously, both games succeed in skillfully telling a story while giving the player enough opportunities to laugh, tense up, and occasionally shit themselves. True emotional complexity -- that is contrasting emotions piling into each other; not sappy music playing over pastoral landscapes -- makes for games with more depth. Whether it’s melancholy music playing over an upbeat adventure or comedic dialog overlapping a harrowing scenario, layered emotional tones can create unique, memorable moments in games.
Start with a bangNeither Max Payne has a good story. Sure, they have great atmosphere, personality, and characters, but they hardly make up a tale we haven't heard before. What these games do have, however, is an immediate and clear goal given to the player by a time-tested story method: starting in media res.For you illiterate swine, in media res is a Latin term which means “into the middle of things." It’s when a story begins without introducing the setting, characters, and/or scenario. The audience enters into the story at a mid-point. The result is two-fold: positive and negative. On one hand, it creates an indifference in the viewer by distancing them from the characters’ reality. On the other hand, it creates a goal for the viewer: “I must figure out how things got to this point!”Thankfully, Max Payne is such a great narrator that we feel connected to him despite not understanding his situation. Max’s goal and our goal both intersect and conflict: We want him to get his revenge but we also want to know how he got his revenge. It’s an odd thing.I can’t tell you how many games I’ve played that start me from square one. Whether I’m a soldier in a training course or an orphan boy in a mystical village learning ancient mythology, I’ve been through the ringer so many times in games that I now find starting a new one intimidating due to the inevitably dull opening act. Max Payne’s approach is refreshing. I don’t need to have everything spelled out for me. If a developer feels that they must slowly initiate the player to the game world's history, please have the restraint to hold back until an hour or so into the action. Exposition is a cheap tactic in film, but in games it can be devastating to immersion and flow. Not every game needs to follow suit, but if games considered reining in the exposition early on we could tell familiar stories in new ways. Which is what storytelling should be about!
Intelligently varied enemy encountersIndividuality is overrated. Location is everything. Just look around your day job or school. Are the most successful workers/students so stunning or are they just the product of fortunate events that lined before them?Sure, Max Payne may not have the enemy variety of an id Software game, but it makes up for it through economical placement. The game consistently changes things up when it comes to enemy positioning and strategy. Sometimes you’ll open a door and a thug will be standing in front of you with a shotgun pointed toward your face, so you point one right back at him. Another time you may have thugs running away from you for cover -- when do you ever seen that in games? Thugs come in through windows, elevator shafts, and occasionally grapple down from above. You are constantly on your toes. A far cry from Call of Duty, where enemies shuffle out of the same door and line up behind the same wall.It’s hard to give enemy variety to a game grounded in reality. Uncharted and Call of Duty throw heavily shielded enemies for challenge, but they are a nuisance that ruins the flow of combat. Max Payne shows that being creative with simple enemies and increasing their numbers can be much more engaging than one super-powered enemy with a shotgun -- though even Max Payne makes this mistake with a couple lackluster boss encounters. Thankfully these are the exception rather than the rule.
I’ll be completely honest: I was worried I would have to force this entry or completely abandon it all together. As much as I loved Max Payne in 2001, I wasn’t sure it would hold up. I was pleasantly surprised than to rediscover how fantastic it is in nearly every aspect. The sequel made some major improvements in combat, but I still prefer the tone and quirks of the first. It’s hard to pick between the two but thankfully no one is forcing us to.I find Rockstar’s changes to the series very disconcerting as a fan, but I’d rather they make it their own than force themselves to fit into the mold Remedy made. The offbeat humor and tongue-in-cheek story of Max Payne definitely isn’t something most developers would attempt, which is a big factor of why it’s still a refreshing play. One thing I trust Rockstar will get right is the series' penchant for turning combat into a spectacle worthy of a Hollywood action film. So many developers today fail to realize that having action surrounding the player isn't the same as them contributing to it. There are only so many times you can watch a scripted sequence of a helicopter crashing and feel impressed. As the middling Modern Warfare 3 proved, having more helicopters falling and more explosions isn't the answer. The answer, upon revisiting Max Payne, is painfully obvious: Let the player tell the story through their actions and make the presentation so smooth that it feels as if the camera, animation, and enemy reactions were choreographed all along.

[Getting It Right is a monthly series in which I take a look at the elements that make up a classic game. What were the key ingredients that set it apart and make it hold up to this day? Read on to find out.]
It’s not e...

As was previously promised just a few weeks ago, Rockstar and Marvel have released the first part of the Max Payne 3 comic. Written by Dan Houser and Sam Lake, "After The Fall" explains a bit of Max's childhood and some event...

In this new promotional video for Alan Wake's American Nightmare, the villainous Mr. Scratch presents a slideshow of critic responses to the game, replying to them and adding his own commentary. Our very own Maurice Tan is e...

Remedy Entertainment is hiring for their next game, which they say is a project 'targeted at future generation consoles.' A posting on Remedy's community forums let members know that more than 20 job openings will open up in ...

Remedy's Alan Wake has topped two million sales on Xbox 360 and PC, becoming enough of a success to secure its future as a series.
"We've moved over two million copies -- that's including PC," Franchise development head...

Oh PC gaming, that hotbed of piracy where developers can never make any money. That's where Remedy was able to make back all of its porting and marketing costs for Alan Wake within a 48-hour period. DAT PIRACY!
The game becam...

Feb 20 //
Maurice Tan
Alan Wake's American Nightmare (Xbox Live Arcade)Developer: Remedy EntertainmentPublisher: Microsoft StudiosReleased: February 22, 2012MSRP: 1200 Microsoft Points ($15)
Following the events of Alan Wake's finale and the novelist's subsequent dark adventures in The Signal and The Writer, Alan has made his way back to yet another piece of Americana: desert-ridden Arizona. During his absense, Alan's dark half Mr. Scratch has been running amok in the "real world" and continues to grow ever more powerful.
Tonight, it's time to put an end to his rule of malice. Tonight, evil lurks in Night Springs.
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American Nightmare follows the structure of an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, inspired by the supernatural and science fiction pulp action genre, as Alan tries to piece together a final solution to rid the world of Mr. Scratch. From a roadside diner and motel, to a mountain observatory and a drive-in, Remedy has once again tried to portray an easily identifiable world within a world and succeeded. Environments are somewhat more open than the largely confined areas seen in Alan Wake, and finding manuscript pages, which now also unlock better weapons, encourages exploration.
Before long, you start to notice that there are far more missing manuscript pages than you can find in a level, even when sweeping it extensively. There's a simple reason for this, and it's not one that everyone is going to like: American Nightmare's story mode makes you retread the same levels multiple times before its conclusion.
Each time, enemy encounters become more challenging, new types of enemies are introduced, and new collectibles can be found. Different and new paths through the levels also present themselves, although this difference can be marginal at best. There's a story-related reason for returning to this familiar ground and the characters who inhabit these levels add to the intrigue somewhat. Even though you won't just be doing the same thing multiple times in a row, it can become a bit too familiar before the journey is over.
Thankfully, this repeated journey is an enjoyable one. I seem to be one of the few people who didn't have any problems with the controls and combat in Alan Wake, but combat is definitely a bit tighter this time around. Largely due to the new weapons and the faster regeneration speed of the flashlight -- which also renders the use of batteries mostly obsolete -- you'll find yourself lighting up and blasting Taken without too much trouble.
A few new insectoid and raven classes of Taken may prove to be troublesome if you have existing phobias; hell, you might even develop a few new ones along the way. Some other new enemies include a Taken that launches darkness grenades at you, the Splitter who splits into two smaller versions if you focus your beam on him, and a The Hills Have Eyes type of mutated hillbilly giant who wields a buzz saw. Some of these new enemies don't exactly fit in the darkness-infested altered reality of the original Alan Wake, but Alan is trapped in a Night Springs story (the fictional Twilight Zone-style show in the Wake universe), so it's easy enough to overlook in favor of improvements on the gameplay.
Although American Nightmare is billed to be accessible to new players, it's still largely tailored to fans of the original game. Manuscript pages fill gaps for those new to the Alan Wake universe, but this self-contained spin-off story still picks up some time after the last "special feature" piece of downloadable content, The Writer, and many allusions to the original can be found in radio shows, cutscenes, and TV viewings. You don't need to be an Alan Wake veteran to enjoy it, but it most definitely helps.
Since Alan is supposed to be trapped inside an episode of Night Springs (or is he?), TV sets will no longer show you the little Night Springs episodes when you turn them on. Instead, you'll find Mr. Scratch talking to you through the magic of live action video. Mr. Scratch is brilliant as a Alan's psychopathic alter ego made flesh, and serves as one of the more believable and memorable examples of a purely evil videogame antagonist in recent history. He is Wake's version of George Stark in Stephen King's The Dark Half, a tale alluded to often in American Nightmare. These little videos also add a lot of character to create a more tangible opponent -- something Alan Wake was missing -- and what Mr. Scratch is lacking in mystery compared to the Dark Presence in the original game, he more than makes up for with sheer evil.
Besides the new story and updated combat, a conceptually brilliant mechanic sees the light of day in American Nightmare. Alan can now reshape reality by recreating a setting to match his manuscript pages, which triggers an event that was not supposed to happen according to Mr. Scratch's plans. For the first time since you were able to turn words into objects by shining your flashlight onto them in Alan Wake and its DLC, you finally get to put your often hinted-at powers to work and really play as the creative artist who can wield the power of creation to combat the Dark Presence's influences. As innovative and ambitious as the mechanic sounds, however, it's sadly underused and underdeveloped.
Instead of being able to actually be creative with this weapon of creativity, altering reality through the process of exerting free will and breaking the chain of predetermination, you end up following a streamlined design. The act of reshaping reality is as simple as walking to markers on your map to press a button, until a setting is deemed complete enough to allow you to progress. It's a shame, since the first time you see the results of your reality-reshaping actions alongside a booming soundtrack, your mind is overwhelmed with the sheer possibilities of such a mechanic within the Alan Wake universe. The second time you do it, it's a case of déjà vu. The third time, it's Groundhog Day. Since American Nightmare acts as both a continuation of the story and a self-contained spin-off experiment, this is definitely one of the key aspects we'll want to see further explored in the future of the franchise. Given the limitations of a downloadable title, it's understandable that Remedy didn't take this all the way, but it fits the Wake universe so perfectly that just a taste of it is simply not enough.
Through your repeated journey, you'll meet characters with whom you can interact a bit more than before. The voice acting of the second character you'll meet is cringeworthy, as is her mindboggling insistance on holding her arms in creepily peculiar position that is as robotic as her voice. While you are talking to these characters, you're free to walk around a bit as you go through the motions of a conversation, leading to a lot of cases of jumping around and aiming your gun at their faces while you're telling them not to be afraid. Still, American Nightmare manages to make a hipster girl sexy against all odds, so it deserves credit for that.
What criticisms one can raise against American Nightmare's story mode tend to vanish while playing the game's third act, as increasingly tense combat encounters are accompanied by rock music and ramp up the pacing to the finale. It's during this last act that all the elements of gameplay, visuals, and music start to fully work together, and it's only then that you finally reach a state of perfect flow while playing it. Even the matter of going through the same levels is eventually forgiven as everything falls into place -- it's almost the complete opposite of the third act in any Stephen King storyline. Moreover, the title looks and feels like a full-fledged title. While it's not quite as long as Alan Wake was, it's equally as satisfying most console shooters' campaigns. By the time you finish it, you have to remind yourself that it's "only" an XBLA title.
The story mode is worth the price of admission alone and it's a no-brainer for Wake fans to pick it up just to see more of their favorite hero, but American Nightmare also offers a new "Arcade Action" mode called Fight Till Dawn. More like Mercenaries and less like a Horde mode, this is where you'll improve on the combat skills you may have honed while beating the harder difficulties of the original game. Five levels give you ten minutes to blast through as many waves as possible for the highest score. Every time you shoot or dodge an enemy, your multiplier bar increases. Get hit, and you lose all your multiplier progress.
It's a frantic mode that forces you to never get hit if you want to compete on the leaderboards, and one that you'll quickly find yourself playing for an hour here and there. Even though the new weapons feel like overkill for Wake veterans in the story mode, their relative strengths and weaknesses come to fruition in this Arcade mode. It also highlights the occasional dysfunction of your dodge move, unfortunately. This dodge move is key to maintaining and increasing your multiplier during large group encounters, but can also be a bit fickle about working as advertised. Occasionally it will let you down like a childhood friend during times of crisis when you thought you could count on it. After putting a couple of days into Arcade mode, you will learn to work around it, turning the dodge move into a somewhat flaccid extension of your virtual persona, like a numb arm you flail around as a last resort against an oppresive foe of darkness.
Once you've performed well enough in the standard five levels, you can unlock their Nightmare difficulty versions that start you out at a different location on the map, and mixes up weapon and ammo locations. Any player who doesn't get enough of a challenge from the story mode will get his ass kicked in these Nightmare levels. The levels are far darker, there is only one escape zone of light to regenerate your health, and waves keep spawning regardless of your progression. It's no small feat to survive one of these levels, let alone reach a high score, and despite the odd annoying Taken grenadier who can regularly hit you out of the blue thanks to the lack of a proper grenade indicator, this is by far one of the tensest experiences you'll find on the Xbox 360's entire digital platform.
Arcade mode is a very welcome addition overall, especially since most of American Nightmare is lacking in the mystery and brooding atmosphere that Alan Wake had plenty of. The renewed focus on better combat and high octane action empowers Mr. Wake beyond the weak and shaken physical and mental survivalist of the original. Then again, Alan has already fought his fears and claimed victory over a smoke monster, his irrational Ego, and a thousand Taken, so he is ready to kick some ass this time around. Having said that, anyone who claims there is no tension to be found at all has simply never played any of the Arcade mode levels on Nightmare.
Alan Wake's American Nightmare is as close to a full console title as we've seen on Xbox Live Arcade to date. Its story mode is fun foray into the twisted universe of Alan Wake, even if some of what's going on won't always make complete sense to any but the most dedicated of fans. Remedy has admirably tackled the repetitive nature of the campaign in order to get the most out of the the content they had, although it does start to wear thin at the midway point. Thankfully, a strong final act and a ridiculously addictive Arcade mode more than make up for it.
For the hardcore Alan Wake fans, there is a lot to love in this new title. You can enjoy it fully without knowing about everything that happened in the original, the DLC special features, and the expanded universe from the Limited Edition book, but you are most definitely rewarded for having stuck with Alan in his past adventures.
If anything, my main gripe with American Nightmare is that it shows Remedy can take the Alan Wake series to places that could blow us away if someone would just give them the resources to create another full retail title, yet we are only allowed glimpses of various mechanics and experiments in their downloadable titles to date. If that makes you think it's not worth playing, think again. Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a worthwhile expansion to the novelist's saga and one that you'll come back to time and time again, quite literally until the break of dawn.

Ask any fan why they like Alan Wake, and you'll hear different stories. Some will talk about how they enjoyed the Stephen King, Twin Peaks, and Lost inspired storyline and setting. Others will laud the tense experience on the...

With Alan Wake's American Nightmare almost upon us, it's time for a mood-setting launch trailer. Fitting voice-over work, plenty of slow-mo dodges, and a pack of oversized spiders -- yeah, this is pretty good.
The game may n...

Alan Wake will hit Steam on February 16 and will follow a bit later at retail in something they call a "game box." Pricing is confirmed at $29.99 on Steam.
What you'll get with this PC version is high-res graphics and support...

Despite boxed copies of PC games being largely irrelevant to many of us for years now, someone is still buying these things. We know that Alan Wake will see a release on Steam sometime next month, and now Nordic Games has ste...

It's taken over six years, a canceled version and a petition, but Alan Wake is finally coming to PC this February. And some people though the wait for the Xbox 360 version was a long one. Remedy revealed its month of release ...

Jan 11 //
Conrad ZimmermanToday at CES, I had the chance to check out the game's arcade mode which pits Alan against waves of increasingly dangerous enemies which he must stave off until dawn. The stage I played was set in a graveyard and a pretty large one at that. Weapons are scattered around the environment along with the occasional safe haven, lit areas underneath lamps which will provide temporary respite and refill Alan's health before flickering out.
The combat system follows the same pattern as before. Enemies are protected by darkness which must be burned off using a flashlight before they are rendered vulnerable to attack. Gamers already familiar with Alan Wake are in for a surprise or two, though, as new enemy types will require you to switch up tactics. The grenadier, for example, keeps his distance and uses explosives to ruin Alan's day.
Even more insidious are the Splitters. These enemies aren't coated in darkness at all and can be immediately killed. But if you focus your flashlight on them, they'll multiply and become even more of a pain in the ass. Toss one or two of those into a group of regular enemies and it's very easy to wind up with an uncontrollable mob on your hands.
The combat is also more frantic than ever. Enemies are much more aggressive and the pace of the game is very quick. Even as an experienced player, American Nightmare ripped me a new one and neither of my two attempts to survive the ten minute round met with success.
That's a good thing and I expect that the end result is going to be one hell of a good time to play. Remedy couldn't give us a firm date on when we'll get to play the game in its full glory, as Microsoft has yet to reveal the order in which the House Party titles will hit XBLA (natch). All I can do is expect to be shining a light in the darkness sometime in late February or early March.

I was a big fan of Remedy's Alan Wake. But one of the less thrilling aspects was the combat, which never really evolves much throughout the game and begins to feel a little like a chore the longer you go. My solution to ...

Greetings, travelers! The Destructoid show is back for its regularly-scheduled Monday episode, and boy, have we got news for you! (The answer is yes, in case you were wondering.)
First up, Alan's Wake's American Nightmare is...

Alan Wake's American Nightmare sounds like a good time, and this newly announced arcade mode sounds like an even better time.
The "Fight till Dawn" mode of AWAN has Wake stuck in a battle where he has to survive a full night ...

Dec 19 //
Wesley Ruscher
Alan Wake's American Nightmare (Xbox Live Arcade)Developer: RemedyPublisher: Microsoft Game StudiosRelease: 2012If the original Alan Wake was the perfect accumulation of the psychological thriller, American Nightmare hopes to do the same for fans of pulp-action. Inspired by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and films such as From Dusk Till Dawn, Alan Wake's latest decent into madness turns the action up to eleven while still maintaining Remedy's penchant for atmospheric storytelling. Taking place in the Arizona desert town of Night Springs, fans of Alan Wake might remember its name from the Twilight Zone-esque program that could be watched throughout the original. See early in Wake's career, that talented author lent his skills to writing a few of the show's episodes. And now, not only does Wake find himself trapped in this strange town, but also reliving the events of his past work.
To make matters even worse, Wake's evil doppelganger (called Mr. Scratch) is tormenting him, leaving behind video messages, while on the hunt for his wife Alice. Similar to the first game, these videos are portrayed with live actors -- capturing that Sega CD era FMV vibe. The only scene I witnessed was expertly done and strangely enough, made the supernatural serial killer extremely likable. Hopefully, there are a good amount of these scene in American Nightmare, as they are by far the highlight of the narrative.
American Nightmare's story has all the fixings -- from the limited amount I was shown -- to satisfy the staunchest of fans. My only complaint with the delivery of the story was in the somewhat stiff character performance that took place between Wake and the woman seen below. Similar to the first Mass Effect, each character just stood in place, fairly motionless, as they talked to each other about all the strange occurrences going on. I'm optimistic if this will be addressed, but thankfully everything else, especially the combat, is animated beautifully.
Speaking of the combat, the action in American Nightmare is faster, more frantic, and even more intense than its predecessor. The compelling light versus dark mechanic is back, but has been greatly improved upon to hopefully attract a wider range of players. New exotic weapon types, wilder enemies -- with even more aggressive behaviors -- and a more dynamic and destructible world help create a thrilling pulp-action environment.My favorite of the new weapons, by far, is the nail gun. Similar to an SMG, it quickly rips through foes and offers a decent amount of "rounds" per clip. With more sinister enemy types -- such as ones that continue to split into smaller and faster beings -- having a weapon that can spray a lot of ammo rapidly comes in quite handy when things get hectic. For the more careful shot, there is also the crossbow which hurts enemies even without the aid of light. It's slow to reload, but packs one mean punch.
While the eyes-on demo I witnessed was clearly built to showcase the games improved combat, there's still a balance created for fans of the original. For starters, the folks at Remedy made it clear that there is plenty of optional story content -- extra dialog amongst NPCs, manuscript pages, and radio programs -- for those looking to connect the dots to Wake's endeavors in Bright Falls. Music, as well, also still plays a big part in American Nightmare, with licensed tracks -- like Kasabian's Club Foot -- supporting some of the game's most suspenseful moments. Perhaps the biggest addition to American Nightmare and the one that makes it much more suited for the XBLA experience, is the game's "Fight Till Dawn" mode. Similar to Gears of War's Horde Mode, this arcade-action fest has Wake fighting waves of enemies, with limited resources, hoping to survive 10 minutes to make it safely into dawn. It's not just surviving though that's important, as setting a high score, on the modes leader boards is ultimately the task at hand.
I was able to go hands-on with the game's cemetery map -- one of five available maps at launch -- during my preview. Similar to the story mode, this map exuded a great sense of fear throughout. With the difficulty of each wave building as the time wound down, managing resources while fending off each attacking horde proved as stressful as challenging. While not scary per se, this mode still was just as nerve racking as I remember some of the most tense parts of the original Alan Wake. In the end, I made it through to dawn, but my cowardly skills were highlighted by my measly two-star rating.Remedy promised tons of unlockable rewards for Fight Till Dawn mode and they hadn't ruled out the possibility for more maps in the future. But for those who find the five maps easy, there is also a Nightmare mode that, while not shown, should give even the most diehard action gamer a run for their money. It's kind of funny, when American Nightmare was first created it actually started off strictly as an arcade action game, Remedy told me. They had this new world of weapons and of monsters with a greatly enhanced combat mechanic, but no real setting to call home. Thankfully, the rich idea of Night Springs fit perfectly into place. As excited as I am to blast enemies away in Fight Till Dawn mode, an Alan Wake experience is just not complete without a story to completely mess with my head. Hopefully, the wait isn't too long this time around,as I think that just might make my head explode,

By now, most of us know about the long and challenging path that Remedy traveled in order to see the fruition of the original Alan Wake. Spanning five years of development, the psychological action thriller was not only o...

Described by Xbox World as being "significantly bigger than any episode of the original game," Alan Wake's American Nightmare will have a hub structure to its locales. Fans of Wake have, apparently, taken his disappearance an...

Yesterday a Stream registry hint told us that Alan Wake might be coming to PC. Now we have the official word from Remedy Entertainment. Alan Wake is coming to PC in 2012. Nice! I can't wait to play it at maxed-out settin...

We had nearly given up hope that Alan Wake would ever grace PCs, but the spotting of a Steam registry entry for the game (via NeoGAF) has me feeling pretty good. This method has been reliable enough in the past, particularly ...

Remember the Alan Wake teasers that have been surfacing? Well now there's a trailer to go with them. The full trailer will be premiered during the 2011 VGAs, but Spike has posted a seven second teaser of the upcoming trailer...

Alan Wake developer Remedy believes that Sony and Nintendo need to significantly overhaul their portable efforts if they're to compete against the rising popularity of smartphones and tablets. According to executive VP A...

According to those always crafty ANONYMOUS SOURCES, Remedy is beavering away on a brand new Alan Wake title -- a downloadable offering known as Alan Wake: Night Springs.
The gossip suggests that Night Springs will be ba...

You know that "Alan Wake 2" reference that popped up on LinkedIn? Remedy Entertainment has confirmed that, yes, there's more Alan Wake on the way. It's just not a sequel… or downloadable content for the original game.&...

What did videogame blogs talk about before LinkedIn? The most recent juicy tidbit seems to out that work on the sequel to Alan Wake may well be underway. The LinkedIn profile of an artist shows that work may have been done on...

Remedy CEO Matias Myllyrinne wants the game industry to go all-digital as quickly as possible, and he doesn't give a damn if retailers are left in the dust. They sell used games, so screw 'em, appears to be the general o...